With a solid delivery of a well-crafted address, Ryan was able to touch conservative erogenous zones on President Barack Obama’s record while retaining an appearance of Midwestern reasonableness that centrist voters could find appealing.

If I’d written this as a joke, it would have contained the word “Burkean”, but otherwise it would be pretty much exactly the same.

to attempt a bare minimum of credit for passing within parsecs of reality, it is true that any attraction that Ryan managed necessarily bypassed the functioning analytic mind. so what’s down there in the lizard basement? sex, aggression and, um, respiration?

Look, he’s great for the base. That’s established. What’s potentially dangerous for Democrats is he showed last night an appeal to the center on style. There’s lots of substantive flaws to what he talked about but that’s not what the convention is about. The convention is about a stylistic presentation and reaching both the base and the center and he did it.

I like the second-to-last sentence there. “Sure, he lied a lot. But that’s not important.”

@Darius: He has a point. Reagan lied all the time too, but he seemed avuncular and trustworthy, so people believed him. “Trees cause most of our carbon emissions.” “Ketchup is a vegetable.” If some unfriendly type of person had tried to sell those things, no one would have bought it. They make no sense. But a friendly, avuncular, former movie star? Sold!

@Darius: Halperin’s actually correct in what he says….as long as all that the media report are the style points instead of the substance, that’s all that Ryan will be judged on. That doesn’t make it right, but it does make it an unpleasant reality. And just because I agree with what he says doesn’t mean that I don’t think he’s a serial wanker.

@Violet: The difference was; Reagan always presented himself as a simpleton, Ryan is presenting himself as The Wonk(tm). Calling Reagen out on ketchup would have come across as petty. Ryan doesn’t get that privilege.

@Darius: They got nothing and so they’re spinning style. It’s still an open question as to whether a $2 billion marketing campaign can convince the populace that the emperor’s new clothes are à la mode for the fall season.

@Violet: The difference was; Reagan always presented himself as a simpleton, Ryan is presenting himself as The Wonk(tm). Calling Reagen out on ketchup would have come across as petty. Ryan doesn’t get that privilege.

The good news is, there are lots of people, including people on the wingnuttier side of things, saying Ryan lied, is a liar, told lies, etc. There’s plenty of fluffing, but there’s a lot more “Ryan is a liar” type stuff than usual. And not just from lefty blogs.

Let me see if I have this right; with the nation on its uppers the Republicans are running a ticket headed up by a phony who wants to have a serial liar a heartbeat away from the presidency. If that’s correct then I’ve clearly lived too long.

First, the media ALWAYS swoon over convention speeches. Obviously they did for Palin last time; the public still made its own, considerably more negative judgment very shortly after. (And it’s not necessarily just the GOP that gets this “the speech of his/her life” treatment. In ’88, people were gaga over Dukakis’ acceptance speech — though, when the polls crashed a few weeks later, all that went down the memory hole)

Second: there’s been considerably more pushback than usual on the content of the speech. Multiple spots are pointing up how many misleads/lies Ryan’s speech contained.

And third: contrary to Halperin Wisdom (echoed some places here), I think that DOES matter. Polls from just a week or so ago asked undecided voters what they cared more about, the candidate’s personas or their platforms, and platforms won by a wide margin. Just because the press believes the opposite, and spends all their time gushing about how candidates “connect”, doesn’t mean it’s how voting actually works. Palin, we were told, connected like gangbusters — yet it’s clear many recoiled in horror from her stances. It was repeated endlessly that voters would “prefer to have a beer” with Bush — yet somehow Gore got more votes (from the public if not the Supreme Court). When the press tells you voters make their decisions on gut instincts, not facts, they’re talking about themselves, not the voters.

Reading Free Republic (don’t cry for me Balloon Juice), I’ve noticed that the majority of posts come from a tiny number of sites.

For those unfamiliar, Freeper posts are in the form of a link to an outside URL, an excerpt and some local comment. The other Freepers then comment on it (usually with comic results). It seems that without IBD editorials, “Coach is Right,” CNS, Rush Limbaugh and (drum roll) Politico. They’d run out of material.

Oh yeah, Washington Times and the “Canada Free Press” which appears to be a Canadian publication devoted to supporting American wingnuts for some reason.

@Haydnseek:
I was lolling in the East Fork of the San Gabriel river yesterday. Someone was working gravel pockets for gold a few dozen yards upriver from me. Down river was a family with a couple of youngsters who spent the time daring each other to go into the “deep” water. Good times.

The haze is a feature of the San Gabes. At one time I became interested in the history of this valley. Turned up some pre-turn of that last century accounts from Gabrielleno indians. They called this place The Plain of Smokes because of the haze.

On the upside for the GOP, last night’s speech by Ryan confirmed that he is the rock-star leader of the ideological hard-core conservative movement, capable of exciting the base in a way no one has been able to do since Reagan. He will motivate them to work very hard for the Romney-Ryan ticket.

On the downside for the GOP, whatever positive buzz of attraction he may have created among the swing voters or weakly aligned voters is likely to only be a temporary sugary junk-food buzz that will crash within a week, leaving a large portion of them grumpily resentful of having swallowed any of it down. For once, the poisonously rotten cynical mendaciousness and outright lies at the core of it are too obviously, easily detectable and have too much of a stench for even the normally compliant MSM to swallow without prominently pointing it out, powerful enough to provoke them out of their comfortable he said…she said…both sides do it meme in the purported pursuit of even-handedness. It’s not merely the breathtaking lying in Ryan’s and Romney’s ads and speeches, but it’s starting to provoke resentment among the MSM press for being taken for unwittingly compliant tools and fools intimidated into meekness by concerns against accusations of bias. In particular, this newfound open skepticism and calling out by members of the MSM will end up helping mightily to undermine the efforts of Romney-Ryan to sell themselves as saviors of Medicare against the blatantly false claim that Obamacare raided 700B from senior benefits. If a substantial portion of seniors pick up on how cynically they are being lied to, they WILL take it out of Romney’s hide at the voting booth.

It’s rather pathetic that the press appears to have gone from lamenting that style has overtaken substance in politics to cheerleading the adeptness with which style ties substance to the railroad tracks and rubs its hands with wicked glee.

@Violet:
Hey Violet, thanks for asking. I’m in the process of pulling up my socks and doing the things that need to be done. Last night’s kindness did wonders for my chin-upness and I went online and checked out rents from here to everywhere. My first look will be at Paradise, CA. It’s cheap and it’s a few minutes from Chico (Home of Chico State Uni), ninety minutes from Sacramento and a bit more to SF. As long as I can have fast internet I’m sold. A bonus is that one of my friends from Navy days lives there and he loves it.

Two points to consider: first, the subtext from the weaker MSM members is that this was the convention and we expect some rhetorical “liberties” but coupled with the pressure from their peers, I think they can turn to euphimisms for lying quite quickly. second, I think the euphimisms are the shot across the bow of the USS Romney/Ryan — stop this now and we dont go there, but if you keep paying us for fools, we will go medieval on your a$$.

If Pierce didn’t have a look at the piece in the OP he is clearly prescient and on his way to becoming the Alpha and Omega of pundits:

If you’re a Republican, that should have hit your G-spot with the force of 10,000 vibrators. It was a gorgeous putaway. It should have been tough enough for three speeches. But, almost immediately thereafter, he proceeded to get his Ayn Rand on with a flight of rhetoric that is so belied by the events of his own life that it’s a wonder his tongue didn’t catch on fire simultaneously with his trousers….

@Dennis SGMM: That sounds great. You don’t have to stay anywhere forever, remember. A cheap place to live and a friend nearby will make the change and transition much easier. You might find out you love it or you might get a bit of wanderlust. Both are okay since you’re the master of your destiny now.

And while you’re dealing with the transition remember to be kind to yourself. The hurt has already happened. Beating yourself up about it is you hurting yourself over and over for no reason. Love yourself enough to respect the hurt for what it is and move forward. Sending good thoughts.

The thing about basing a political campaign on blatant lies, that are really a targeting of a certain demographic, in this case, middle aged white working class swing voters, is that once you start, both you and your supporters have to keep chasing that rabbit further and further down the false rabbit hole.

There is no turning back, after a certain point, that I think we reached last night. It is all in and all aboard the ghost ship leaving the port of reality. Any backtracking, mea culpas, etc etc, and you get et alive by the system. And end up without the coin of the realm, credibility.

@Shawn in ShowMe: Yes, a possibility, though PPP doesn’t have a history of that. On the other hand, many of their polls magically tightened a couple of weeks ago for no discernable reason, so who knows.

I watched a bit of Ryan without the sound. Very good on the eyes. Just like Sarah. BUT he’s still the vp not the p candidate. He’s running for 2016 and by then he’ll be older and tireder and we’ll have seen way too much of him and will have learned to see through him. Just like Sarah. We’ll have Hilary in 2016, solid as an old rock, with some cute, smart twinkie vp running mate beside her. We’re OK for 12 more years.

@Dennis SGMM: Well, maybe you coulda’, woulda’, shoulda’, or maybe not, but you’re where you are now. Recognize that you did what you did for a reason–honor that reason and change the power the reason has on you if necessary–but beating yourself up about it is just you hurting yourself over and over again. Doesn’t help anything, least of all you. Learn from it, but enjoy your life. You can do all those things you might not have done before. It can be great if you let it.

There’s also Halperin’s take: Look, he’s great for the base. That’s established. What’s potentially dangerous for Democrats is he showed last night an appeal to the center on style. There’s lots of substantive flaws to what he talked about but that’s not what the convention is about. The convention is about a stylistic presentation and reaching both the base and the center and he did it.

Good grief! Is this what our troops fought for when defending our freedoms? What point is it to have a democracy when the election is based on style rather than the issues? Why not just get rid of the debates and just have a beauty contest?

And BTW – Halperin is forever on my ignore list since he had the audacity to call Obama the D word.

Fucking TPM. Why run that story at all, if it’s so substance-free? Here’s my outline:

Jeb Bush responds to charges of Paul Ryan lying.
__
Lie: Obama is to blame for closing that GM plant
Debunk: it closed in 2008
Jeb: but Obama said earlier that year that it would be open for 100 years so he’s a big fibber
__
Lie: Obama didn’t follow Simpson-Bowles
Debunk: Ryan voted against Simpson-Bowles
Jeb: yes Ryan voted against Simpson-Bowles so what
__
Charge: Paul Ryan is a big fat liar
Jeb: but he drafted a budget so how can he be a liar

I’m barely exaggerating. Does Pema Levy think this shit merits publishing because people need to see what an idiot Jeb is? Or did she just burn her whole day securing an interview and had to have something to show for it?

@FlipYrWhig: the other thing to remember is that it is not clear whether to use 2008 exit polls or 2010 exit polls or some weighted average for voter composition in the poll. I think that this is a major big deal as it pertains to latino turnout in Nevada and Colorado.

@Violet:
Again, thank you. I’m putting one foot in front of the other and hoping for better days. I am the only one of my circle of friends who remained married to the same person and I’m still in love with her. A change of scenery and some distance will help, I know. As someone wisely observed, getting old ain’t for sissies.

@Paul: And on top of all that, we should never lose sight of the fact that “appeals to the center on style” always actually mean “I, the pundit, liked it,” or “I, the savvy pundit, know how wrong this is, but I easily imagine ignorant rubes lapping up this bilge.”

Frank: Oh, I just love success!
Riff Raff: He’s a credit to your genius, Master.
Frank: Yes!
Magenta: A triumph of your will.
Frank: Yes!
Columbia: He’s OK!
Frank: OK? OK? I think we can do better than that! Well Brad and Janet, what do you think of him?
Janet: Well, I don’t like men with too many muscles.
Frank: I didn’t make him for you!… He carries the Grover Norquist seal of approval.

@eric: I totally agree. Every polling outfit has to come up with a “likely voter” model, and if the one they derive ends up a bad fit with who actually turns out, their predictions are going to be a wreck. My sense is that the pollsters are banking on massive Republican enthusiasm, and that’s why the LV polls look so good for the Smails/Haskell ticket.

And seriously, who has any enthusiasm for Mitt Romney for god’s sake? KOS over that the Yellow Menace(tm) was talking about polls they showed even the majority of Republicans expect Mitten’s lose against Obama.

@jwb: Not a polling expert, but over at 538, its mentioned that many pollsters switched their methodology slightly during that timeframe. Instead of Registered Voters (RV), the polls are now contacting Likely Voters (LV), which, apparently makes a slight difference in mathafication stuff.

@Nemesis: In essence, if you think that the composition of the voter pool is going to be like 2010, you’ll keep finding Republicans flourishing, because a hell of a lot of Republicans voted for their side. If you think it’s going to be like 2008, you’ll keep finding Democrats flourishing, accordingly.

@Dennis SGMM:
Didn’t see the post about your situation last night so I’m catching up a bit.
Also 60’s with a major life change. Right now I’m living at a friends house (about 4-5 months) in so cal and doing odd jobs. Had to go on SS to make ends meet and try and figure out what the hell to do next. You are correct that getting older is no picnic but then when I was younger life wasn’t all that anyway. Some good days, but mostly just sun comes up, sun goes down. One advantage over youth is that we have seen some hard days and know that there is a chance that they won’t all be like that. As it is said, it does get better.
Have you lived in other countries or were you stationed there? I’m interested in retiring to another country because they are frequently better to live in without money. I just don’t know where to go and can’t afford to travel there to check it out. That’s a big issue.
Anyway best to you, it will work itself out.

What a sad day for news outlets. Politico’s walls and floors covered in jizz as their “reporters” are leaned over their computers, spent from watching Ryan’s manly squarejawed yapping. Over at WAPO, fact checkers trying to write their pieces over the sounds of Jennifer Rubin’s orgasms and Michael Gerson’s seed flying everywhere. And at CNN, someone trying to wake John King up from his post masturbation nap. All over a pair of watery blue eyes…

@Ruckus: From what I hear of retired military guys, the Phillipines or Thailand is the place to go. Of course, they had more obvious reasons, but I also understand that the cost of living was dirt cheap. In Korea, we had a group of veteran ex-pats/ bikers who owned a bar that I liked to go to. They seemed to be doing okay. I don’t know how many were retired.

Oh, sweet jesus, has this been covered here? Lady Ann steps up minority outreach by telling Hispanic voters to lose the bad attitude about the GOP, admonishes them to “wake up” and “get past their biases.”

1. On February 13, 2008 Obama said in Janesville : “I believe that if our government is there to support you, and give you the assistance you need to re-tool and make this transition, that this plant will be here for another hundred years.”
..
2. In June 2008 GM announced that the Janesville plant would stop production of medium-duty trucks by the end of 2009, and stop production of large SUVs in 2010 or sooner.
..
3. In October 2008 Obama doubled down on his promise to keep Janesville plant open: “As president, I will lead an effort to retool plants like the GM facility in Janesville so we can build the fuel-efficient cars of tomorrow and create good-paying jobs in Wisconsin and all across America.”
..
4. In December 2008 GM idled production of GM SUVs at the Janesville plant. Medium-duty truck assembly continued.
..
5. In April 2009, four months after Obama was inaugurated, GM idled production of medium-duty trucks.
..
6. In September 2011, more than two years after Obama was inaugurated, GM reiterates that Janesville plant is on “stand by status.” Auto industry observer David Cole, tells the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel it would be premature to say the Janesville plant will never reopen.
..
6. Today the GM facility in Janesville still has not been retooled “so we can build the fuel-efficient cars of tomorrow and create good-paying jobs,” as Obama promised.

I like the two step 6’s. Ironically, right above this, someone posted a link which pretty solidly demonstrates that the decision to shutter the plant was made either before or days after Obama’s inauguration:http://gazettextra.com/news/20.....finalized/

@Ruckus:
Thank you for the kind words. You;’re correct about life having presented us with some hard times and I can console myself with the fact that I’m not on a little bitty base in the Mekong Delta with any number of patriots (No irony intended) trying to shoot my ass clean off.

I was born and raised in the USN and my late father, a serious anchor clanker Chief Petty Officer, was fond of reminding us that “You didn’t sign on for no Kiddy Cruise.”
ill get

Things will get better, maybe, and they sure will get different. Different is good enough for now.

Incredibly, the larger theme of Ryan’s speech was to assail Obama for failing to take full responsibilities for this state of affairs — Obama is “shifting blame,” “blaming others.” It is the single largest motif of Ryan’s speech. Let’s review: Ryan helps to create a massive structural deficit, repeatedly and almost single-handedly prevents a solution, then runs for vice-president, blaming Obama for the structural deficit and further blaming him for his unwillingness to agree that this is all his own fault. The really amazing thing is that it could possibly work.

@Dennis SGMM:
If you had thought too much about what to do after a major life change either you would never been able to experience the good parts or it would have happened sooner because you were thinking about it. We can’t plan life. I can barely plan lunch these days, but I’m learning to role with it.

@Cassidy:
No worries. There’s nothing like being in an early model Huey and seeing the path of these .51 cal APIT rounds (We called them flaming footballs) appearing to curve up from the ground in a way that could not fail to intersect the path of your aircraft. Once all of the ladder lights went from green to red and then went out we were all pretty much along for the ride. Our pilot, God bless him, attempted to land on a dike between some of the omnipresent rice paddies. We did hit the dike and then our bird slid off into the paddy, my side (Starboard) down. I found myself drowning in a foot and a half of water with my buddy, Fast Eddie, standing on my chest while demanding to know if I was all right. Do you know what else there is in a rice paddy, besides the water? Shit. I am one of the few people on this blog who can truthfully say that I have been up to my neck in shit.

Our trail bird orbited until they got a slick out to us to bring us home. While we were waiting, I pulled out my waterproof plastic cigarette pack container, extracted a joint from among the Camel straights and fired up. Best damn reefer I ever smoked even if I did have to share it.

@Dennis SGMM: Nice. I’ve taken some dicey slogs through water and irrigated land in Iraq, but I’ve never been that deep. OTOH, our pilots in Korea liked to flair up about 5 feet from land and we had to guess whether the ground was solid or not as it shit a bunch of Infantryman. Good times.

@GxB: @hep kitty: I just have to note again that she said this shit while ostensibly doing Hispanic outreach. It wasn’t something she just popped off with during an interview about something else. She was actively shilling for Latino votes while she told them they needed to smarten up and lose their anti-GOP sullenness.

Thanks for the first person account, Dennis (sorry about your current unpleasantness).

I think one of the first WWII books I remember in our house growing up was the American Heritage History of WWII. At the beginning of each section, it had a first person account from someone in that particular theater. One of the ones that quite vividly stuck with me was from a survivor of the Bataan death march.

He talked about a buddy with him and another guy who would cry out about every five miles or so that he could not go any further. He and the other guy knew if they tried to carry him, they’d likely die themselves from the extra exertion. So instead, they’d use words of encouragement, or on occasion if needed, sidle up behind him and give him a few forward bumps with their shoulders. He said it was like that all the way to the camp but his buddy did in fact survive the war.

That story had a profound effect on me in that it was a reminder that one can still help even when you think you have nothing left to give yourself.

@shortstop:
Yeah this kind of crap just adds to the (ab)normal life crap that way too many of us are going through. I don’t feel like I have any blood left to boil anymore. And I’m an old white dude. Thing is this is really no different than the last 40-60 yrs. We see it raw, basically in real time, unfiltered by news rags. This is a fairly new development and many are still not looking. But the number is growing so I’m hoping that I will see in my time, that the racists become so reduced in number and power that they become a laughing stock, not a major political party. But then I’m still waiting for my pony.

@Cassidy:
Ha! Good times indeed. We were young and didn’t give a damn.
One more story from my time there. The funniest thing that happened to me back then was when we went into a very hot LZ (Landing Zone). The folks on the ground there had shot down two Army helos and we were the closest outfit and we rode to the rescue (Cue “Flight of the Valkeryies.”) anf the locals were ready and waiting. I don’t know whom we tangled with but I do know that when one of the Army guys popped a smoke our opposition put a mortar round directly onto it.

We were several feet above the ground and those hollow-sounding lead bees were definitely getting our attention. Pilot said “Get out, get out, get out!” So I jumped. That would have been okay save for the fact that I had my field gear, an M60A1 machine gun, Chinese knock-off Tokarev pistol, and 400 rounds of 7.62 NATO ammunition on my person. I sank into the ground right up to my crotch. Talk about embarrassed. My ammo passer jumped after I did and he couldn’t stop laughing despite the lead storm.

@LanceThruster:
It was the shit. I have always had the sneaking suspicion that you only go around once. So I volunteered to serve in-country and then I went on every crazy-ass mission I could. Lest you think that those days affected me in some bad way, I loved the people there, who were caught up in something incomprehensible to most of them. The folks who were fighting us were patriots in the best sense of the word. I was just a young asshole. Now I’m an old one.

My friend’s older brother was Vietnam combat infantry. He said their chopper PA tune was the Chambers Brothers “Time Has Come Today.”

My friend also spoke of his brother’s cassette tapes made when in an altered state sitting in a camp guard tower and recording his observations while in country, but to this day, he hasn’t let any of us listen to them.

I think I know what you mean, but certainly from an outsider’s point of view. I marvel at what it entails to be in that situation, without glorifying the horror.

Crazy Earl: These are great days we’re living, bros. We are jolly green giants, walking the Earth with guns. These people we wasted here today are the finest human beings we will ever know. After we rotate back to the world, we’re gonna miss not having anyone around that’s worth shooting.

@Dennis SGMM: Lol. If it makes you feel better, pilots are still the same. Air Assaults these days resemble a regurgitated gaggle of green out both doors, everyone right on top of one another. The only place I’ve seen more injuries is frisbee football and the motorpool.

We did a AA once and our gunner hopped out into waist deep snow and immediately bent at the waste going face first into it. It took two of us to get him upright. That was Bosnia.

@LanceThruster:
During my time there I partied “Smoke cangsa!” with some VC who’d been on the opposite end of a couple fracases. We drank Doc Johns (Quinine water and lemon juice, sovereign against the Anopheles mosquitoes) shared a couple of loaves of fresh French bread. After we all became comfortable the wallets and the pictures came out. I find it nearly impossible to believe that my country still travels thousands of miles to blow people up.

I think I’ve mentioned this here before, but I became draft age in ’75. I considered enlisting, feeling if there was ever a “safe” time to serve, that might have been it…but I could not reconcile the fact that at some future point, my government might order me to kill people that didn’t deserve killing, and I wanted to take the oath and commitment seriously.

@Dennis SGMM: Done the same with Iraqis. I don’t know if they were the “enemy” but I know that you don’t have to speak the same language to communicate about your family. And that’s always the bottom bit; we’re all just grunts fighting someone else’s war. The guy on the other end ain’t no different. We were just born in different places.

@LanceThruster: The way you reconcile that, FWIW, is that you do your job for the people around you. I was sent by President Bush to a war I didn’t think was right, but I’m a damn good Medic. And I knew my people were going to need me and my crew. It never changed my mind about the war, but it gave me the room to do what I needed to do. I was going to go willingly or kicking and screaming, so I made the best of it. I can’t speak for Vietnam, but the oppurtunities to shoot an enemy combatant weren’t plentiful, even in 2005.

That’s the best explanation I’ve heard. You’re fighting for the people next to you and know they’re doing the same. That makes for some tight knit loyalty.

I used to joke that I’d be “in the rear, with the gear,” but I guess you never know how you’d react in any given situation, until you’re actually in it.

For me, it’s like the First Aid training I’ve had. The more I feel confident that I can render aid, the more I can overcome the feeling of helplessness and the wooziness I feel at the sight of blood or injury.

I compare it to being an adult around a child with a skinned knee. To them, they’re in agony, but I know with a little TLC and some Bactine, they’ll turn the corner.

Re: combat medics, I remember seeing some pictures from Iraq of a corpsman treating a Marine for heat exhaustion. When I read the caption, I expected some noble words about tending those in need. Instead, the corpsman said to the reporter, “This wouldn’t happen if they just drank enough goddamn water!”

Here’s the thread from last night. If you read down the comments, a lot of people had good information about retiring to other countries. Many of them apparently require you to prove a baseline monthly income. But there is also a group of U.S. veterans living on the cheap in Guatemala.